They are real documents on their own, but sequenced in a way that tells a different story from the moment they were taken. I wanted to question everything about Christmas and what it had become in today’s culture.

(Trent Parke)

Trent Parke’s photographic series The Christmas tree bucket 2006–09 is a tender and darkly humorous portrayal of his extended family coming together to celebrate Christmas. The series showcases Parke’s distinctive and acclaimed visual style and his skilful use of light and colour, to transcendent effect.

The Christmas tree bucket is a candid, unsettling and often absurd portrait of family life—centred on the chaos, rituals and contradictions of the suburban Australian Christmas. It is a fond, insider’s view—sharp but affectionate—and one that the participants, after initial bemusement, actively embraced. Parke draws from the legacy of postwar American photography while retaining a distinctly personal visual language, using light and colour to transform the everyday. The resulting photographs are both intimate and theatrical, sometimes hilarious, sometimes poetic and haunting.

The exhibition also features a small selection of work from Parke’s black-and-white series Minutes to midnight 2003‒04 and a number of his handmade concertina photobooks, which he sees as a central part of his practice.

Trent Parke (born Mulubinba/Newcastle 1971) is one of the most insightful and compelling documentarians of contemporary Australia and the only Australian photographer to have become a member of prestigious photo agency Magnum. Parke picked up a camera in his teenage years after the sudden death of his mother from an asthma attack—a way of trying to make sense of an unpredictable world. For him, photography 'is a discovery of life which makes you look at things you’ve never looked at before. It’s about discovering yourself and your place in the world.'